Alain Françon is a stage director who is curious and faithful, curious about new writers and faithful to some old masters. Since 1972, he has staged more than fifty plays by Chekhov, Ibsen, Feydeau, Vinaver, O'Neill, etc. In 1992, he directed for the first time a work of Edward Bond, La Compagnie des Hommes (In the Company of Men). It was the start of a real affinity between the famous British writer and the French stage director.
Françon's determination made Bond's politically engaged theatre well-known in France, notably after Françon was appointed director of the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris en 1997. The War Plays, Coffee, The Crime of the 21st Century and Have I None have all been staged in keeping with Bond's writing, all of them scalpel-sharp analyses of a world that is becoming dehumanised, of a world that could exist if we are not careful.
With his \'gang' of regular actors, Alain Françon has made this reflection on the contemporary world \'classic', in the same way that he made the most established \'classics' by his favourite writers, contemporary.
At the Avignon Festival, Alain Françon presented Je songe au vieux soleil... based on works by William Faulkner and Mes souvenirs by Herculine Barbin in 1985, A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill in 1987, Tir et Lir by Marie Redonnet in 1988, War Plays by Edward Bond in 1994 et Edward II by Christopher Marlowe in 1996.
Edward Bond was born in 1934 in Holloway, North London, into a working-class family. His first play The Pope's Wedding, was first performed in 1962 at The Royal Court Theatre and marked the start of his career as a playwright with now thirty plays to his credit.
Among his plays are Saved, which created a scandal when it was first staged in 1965, the War Plays trilogy, In the Company of Men and Olly's Prison. Edward Bond is especially interested in dramas for young people, working with youngsters in workshops and writing plays specifically targeting younger audiences. He has directed some of his own plays and published his theories on drama.
Considered as one of the great contemporary playwrights of the English language, he writes political theatre which seeks to highlight the contradictions of Western civilization and to warn his contemporaries of the excesses of authoritarianism which hang over them.
Edward Bond's work was first performed at the Avignon Festival in 1970 when Georges Wilson directed Early Morning in the Courtyard of Honour at the Pope's Palace.
Born - This text digs deeper into the furrow of the tragic epic through which Edward Bond asks questions about his era. It's a depiction of a de-humanised world where people still live, but under surveillance, under orders, in terror. This world is one of fear, of men, women and children living under the WAPOs (the war-police) who bully people, deport and kill them in the name of an omnipresent but invisible power.
The violence in this drama, in acts and in words, is such that the spectator is compelled to tackle these problems and not run away from them. Edward Bond calls on people's responsibility to the future, by appealing to their imagination and their good sense, both necessary to make people \'humans' so that “our democracies do not become the most complete forms of slavery.”
Bond also wrote this disturbing but forceful play in defence of a type of drama “which is not just another shop in the market”, inventing a universe which is yet a work of imagination, but which we can feel looming already. The executioners have something humane about them, even they are victims of the system they embody, and that reinforces our doubts and leaves us few ways out.
With its precisely constructed language, here is a new sort of 21st Century, political theatre, which is committed and refuses to be treated as merchandise: theatre which proposes new arms for those who don't want to go blind. Born is the third play in a tetralogy whose first two parts, Coffee and The Crime of the 21st Century were first staged in French by Alain Françon at the Théâtre National de la Colline in 2000 and 2001. Edward Bond recently finished writing People (Les Gens), the last of the four plays.
Jean-François Perrier
“There is no drug, no treatment that will make us human: we have to recreate our humanity permanently and theatre is the place where that humanity is recreated.”
Distribution
texte français : Michel Vittoz
stage direction Alain Françon
avec : Stéphanie Béghain, Yoann Blanc, Carlo Brandt, Luc-Antoine Diquéro, Éric Elmosnino, Victor Gauthier-Martin, Pierre-Félix Gravière, Guillaume Lévêque, Dominique Valadié, Abbès Zahmani
dramaturgie : Michel Vittoz et Guillaume Lévêque
scénographie : Jacques Gabel
lumières : Joël Hourbeigt
costumes : Patrice Cauchetier
univers sonore : Gabriel Scotti
conseil chorégraphique : Caroline Marcadé
maquillages et masques : Dominique Colladant
assistant à la mise en scène : David Tuaillon
Production
Production : Théâtre National de la Colline
Texte français publié par : l'Arche éditeur